


The Shade’s Hill Haunting

by mimsyborogove



Series: Frightening Fall Fic Fest [4]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: All Human AU, F/M, Fluff from Halloween through Christmas, Ghosts, Hallmark Holiday Special AU, SHFallFic, Week 5: Haunted, but not scary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2020-11-15 06:23:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20861696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimsyborogove/pseuds/mimsyborogove
Summary: Still grieving the loss of her mother, and deep in debt from the medical bills, Catarina Loss moves from New York to the small town of Shade’s Hill to get back on her feet.The rent for the house she found seems too good to be true, and Catarina soon discovers the secret of a mysterious disappearance that the eccentric landlord had failed to disclose to her.





	The Shade’s Hill Haunting

**Author's Note:**

> The premise was inspired by one of those cheesy Christmas romances I watched a year or two ago (I think it was called the Christmas Spirit or the Spirit of Christmas), but doesn’t share a lot of details with it, only tropey Hallmark movie type cheese spread all the way from Halloween to Christmas. Because Catarina deserves to be the romance novel heroine every now and then.

A flash of gold caught Magnus’s eye from across Ragnor’s guest room, where Ragnor was standing by the closet, unpacking one of the moving boxes Magnus had hastily crammed with all his belongings when he had finally told Camille it was over and he was leaving.

“That doesn’t look like mine,” Magnus said as Ragnor pulled the thick chain out from where it had been hidden among Magnus’s dress shirts.

“It looks like the kind of tacky thing you would wear,” Ragnor replied, the heavy circular pendant dangling from his long fingers as he lifted the necklace up to inspect it. 

“I would _never_,” Magnus insisted, horrified by the thought. He accessorized _much_ more tastefully. “Camille must have put it in with my stuff by mistake.”

Camille had treated the breakup like a joke until Magnus was actually out the door, so it wouldn’t surprise him if she had slipped something of hers into one of the boxes to force him to talk to her again in order to return it. That sounded like the kind of sneaky stunt she would pull.

“I’d say to check the picture inside, but Camille’s the kind of narcissistic snake who would wear her own portrait around,”  Ragnor said, absentmindedly flicking open the latch on the locket.

A brilliant flash of light blinded Magnus, and he instinctively threw an arm over his face to protect his eyes. There was a popping sound like a small explosion, and then the feeling of all the air being sucked from the room. 

“Ragnor!” Magnus shouted, still dizzily blinking the light out of his eyes as he rushed to the empty spot where his friend had been standing. “_Ragnor!_

——

Catarina Loss suppressed a shiver as she slammed the door of the cheapest car she had been able to find on short notice, the sound magnified by the silence of the street. She stopped for a moment and stared up at her new house. Well, temporary house. But she hoped she would be here for long enough to get back on her feet at least. 

Something about the place felt off, but she couldn’t put her finger on why. It was a perfectly ordinary house. Two stories, plus an attic, set back a little ways from the road for privacy. A nice porch, complete with a comfortable looking porch swing. The yard looked like it had been full of well tended flowerbeds once, but they had become overgrown with weeds over the summer. The back yard opened into a small patch of woods, which she could see a little of from the front of the house.

She just wasn’t used to the quiet, she decided. She was used to cars and sirens and the chatter of crowds walking down the sidewalk, none of which existed at the edges of the small town of Shade’s Hill. Even the nearest other house on this street was barely close enough to see. 

Catarina shivered again as she mounted the porch steps. The day was warm, but it felt almost chilly on the porch, like autumn had arrived between the driveway and the front door. 

She shook off the thought. This was all she could afford. She had spent most of her life in New York City— ever since she and her mother had immigrated from Trinidad and Tobago when Catarina was a toddler. Her family had always been just her and her mom. Things had been tight when Catarina was a child, but they had been happy. 

Then her mother had gotten sick. 

Catarina, fresh out of nursing school and still finding her footing in her first job, had insisted they try every treatment available. She hadn’t told her mother that some of the treatments hadn’t been covered by insurance, and Catarina had quietly taken on the medical bills. It had bought them an extra few years, which Catarina would forever be grateful for, but it hadn’t been enough to make her mother better. She had passed away six months ago. 

Even working as many shifts as the hospital would allow, Catarina hadn’t been able to keep up with the mounting pile of school loans, medical debt, and funeral expenses on top of the absurd new rent prices her landlord wanted. New York was the only city she had ever really known, but she realized that if she wanted to get her head back above water, she would have to move somewhere more affordable once her lease was up. 

When she came across the listing for the house in a small town just a few hours drive north, it seemed too good to be true. It would only be a short term solution, but it was like being thrown a lifeline.

The owner was renting the entire house—fully furnished— for a year while he traveled on business. And the price he was asking was staggeringly low, only a quarter of her current rent, even with utilities included. 

_If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is_, her mother’s voice echoed in her head. 

But beggars also couldn’t be choosers, Catarina thought firmly, shaking off her doubts and emailing the landlord before she could second guess herself. Even if it was just for a year, if she was careful, she should be able to make enough of a dent in her debt that she wouldn’t feel like creditors were constantly breathing down her neck.

The landlord met her at the door in a flash of colorful scarves. Magnus Bane had given her a tour of the place the week before, when she had driven upstate to Shade’s Hill to interview for her new nursing job at the local hospital.

Catarina had liked Magnus on sight. Magnus was more than a little ridiculous, but she could see his kind intelligence under the act. He had an easy grin and an openness about him that made him seem especially trustworthy. 

“Haven’t changed your mind?” Magnus said lightly, standing aside so she could enter the house. His hair was spiked up dramatically with gel that gave it a blue sheen, and glittering gold lined the curve of his eyes, accentuating their warmth.

Catarina laughed. “Afraid not. You’re stuck with me for the next year.”

“Let me help you with your things then,” Magnus grinned back. 

Catarina didn’t have much. Since Magnus was renting the house fully furnished, she had sold anything that wouldn’t fit in the trunk of the old car she’d had to buy since Shade’s Hill lacked the convenience of New York’s subway system. She figured when she had to move again, she could make do without luxuries like sofas and coffeemakers. 

“I’ve put a few things away in the attic,” Magnus said as he sat down the last of her boxes in her new bedroom. “It’s the only part of the house that’s off limits. Feel free to use anything else.”

This house was the biggest place Catarina had ever lived, and her own belongings didn’t even fill up the master bedroom. She couldn’t imagine owning enough stuff to ever need an attic for storage. 

Magnus fished the house keys out of his pocket as Catarina walked him back to the front door. They were attached to a plush cactus keychain that had a scowling, hand embroidered face. 

“You have my number if you need anything,” Magnus reminded her, pressing the cool metal into her hand. “I’ll be in France for the foreseeable future, but I’ll do what I can if there’s any trouble.”

Catarina may have imagined it, but she thought she saw Magnus’s eyes flick up to the attic window before he walked away. 

——

Catarina climbed gratefully into her new bed that night. She may not have had much to move in and unpack, but it had been a long drive and she was exhausted. The bed was huge, and unbelievably soft. It would be hard to not get used to this, she thought with a sigh as she closed her eyes. 

She couldn’t have been asleep long when she was startled awake by the slam of a door down the hall. 

She sat up, heart pounding, and looked around the silent room, half expecting one of the shadows to jump out at her.

No, surely not, she thought, calming back down. She was alone here. She must have heard someone slam a car door outside, and her dream turned it into something else. 

She snuggled back down under the covers, pulling them up to her neck as a defense against the goosebumps prickling up her spine. Those definitely sounded like footsteps going down the stairs. 

Catarina grabbed the heavy flashlight she kept for emergencies from where she had stashed it next to the night stand, and crept out of her room. She kept the light off, but the weight of the flashlight made her feel better. If nothing else, it was probably at least as good of a weapon as a baseball bat if there actually was someone in the house.

Downstairs looked empty, with no new sounds and nothing out of place. She double checked the locks on the doors, made sure the windows were shut, opened all the closets, looked under all the tables.

Everything locked. No one there. Nothing disturbed.

It must have been the house settling, she told herself. She just wasn’t used to being in a big old house like this on her own, without any loud neighbors to share walls with.

That’s all it was. 

——

Catarina stood yawning in the kitchen the next morning. She pulled down a coffee mug that had an image of Oscar the Grouch on it for some reason, and made a large pot of coffee to combat the fitful night of sleep she had gotten the night before. She had woken several more times, still feeling like she was hearing footsteps and creaking doors outside of her room, but there was never anything there when she checked. 

Maybe all the noises she thought she heard were just nerves over starting a new job. Still yawning, she made her way back to her room to get ready for her first day at Shade’s Hill Hospital.

Catarina never put much thought into what she wore, favoring practicality over fashion, but this was the exception. Most of the units at the hospital had designated colors of scrubs the staff were allowed to wear, but Catarina had gotten a job in the pediatric ER, which had slightly different rules. The pediatric nurses were allowed to wear whatever bright colors and cheerful prints they liked in order to make the hospital feel less intimidating to their small patients. 

She pulled on a scrub top covered in a bright dinosaur print. She rarely met a kid who didn’t like dinosaurs, so she figured it was a safe bet for her first day. She twisted her dark hair into a neat bun, then gave herself a once over in the mirror. 

She still looked tired, the cartoon dinosaurs not quite drawing all the attention away from the bags under her eyes, but she would do. 

——

The restless nights interrupted by slamming doors and footsteps in the hall continued for the rest of the week. Once, she thought she had seen an alarmingly person-shaped shadow at the end of the hall, but it had vanished when she turned on the lights. 

A couple of nurses from another unit, wearing matching maroon scrubs, sat down across from her in the hospital cafeteria during her lunch break toward the end of the week. 

“Hey, you’re the one who just moved into the old Fell house, aren’t you?” one with brown hair and lipstick that nearly matched the color of her scrubs asked. 

“Yes?” Catarina answered. The house’s mailbox still had ‘Fell’ lettered on it, but she hadn’t thought to ask Magnus about it. 

“Ooh, that place gives me the willies,” the other nurse said, her curly ponytail bobbing as she gave a theatrical shudder. “The guy who used to live there just vanished into thin air a couple of years ago, right after his weird friend showed up to stay with him.”

“Yeah, didn’t they investigate that guy for murdering Ragnor? I always said he looked all shady. Normal people don’t dress like that.”

“Do you mean Magnus?” Catarina asked. “The landlord?”

The two nurses shared a look and then laughed. “Yeah, that was his name. The cops never found proof he killed Ragnor, so they couldn’t arrest him, but I bet he already sold off all the stuff he stole from Ragnor, so now he’s trying to get money off the house. ‘Course no one around here wants to live in the murder house. I hear the last guy he rented it to ran out within a week. I bet it’s suuuper creepy,” she said with an expectant look toward Catarina. 

Catarina thought about Magnus, with his easy grin and sincere eyes, chatting with her while he helped her carry boxes into the house. She considered herself a good judge of character, and her gut told her Magnus would never be capable of intentionally hurting a friend’s feelings, let alone _murdering_ them. The house may have a secret, but Magnus being a murderer wasn’t it.

“No, there’s nothing creepy about the house at all,” she said cooly, forcing herself to not think about all the strange nighttime noises. “Sorry I don’t have a more exciting story for you.”

She left the pair of women looking disappointed, and got back to work, but an uneasy feeling nagged at her for the rest of the day, which wasn’t helped by the whispering she noticed following her through the hospital. No one talked to her directly unless it was related to work, and she had the uncomfortable feeling that despite the lack of information she had given, she was still currently caught in the center of the small town’s gossip web. 

——

When Catarina got home, she stopped at the mailbox to pull out the pile of fresh reminders of her bills. She sighed. That hadn’t taken long. 

She slid a finger under the seal of one as she walked into the house, pulling out the letter and wincing at the amount that was overdue. 

When she looked up, she was greeted to the sight of all the kitchen cabinets open, every glass and plate stacked in a precarious tower on the kitchen table. 

That was the last straw for Catarina. “No, you colossal asshole, no,” she snapped, brandishing the envelopes in her hand at the empty air. “I’m not dealing with this today. I had an awful day at work, and all I want to do is _sleep_. This is the only place I can afford, so you’re stuck with me. I’m not running off over you stomping around like a tantruming toddler, so for God’s sake, leave me alone.”

One of the cabinet doors hesitantly closed itself. 

“Thank you,” Catarina breathed out, tossing the bills down on the table, then turning on her heel to bolt up the stairs to her bedroom, where the noises never seemed to enter.

She huddled under her covers, expecting more slamming doors and creaking stairs, but the ghost, or whatever it was, left her alone that night. Eventually she dozed off for a blessed night of uninterrupted sleep. 

——

She felt better the next morning, and when she went downstairs to the kitchen, all the tableware was back in its proper places, the cabinets all firmly shut. Catarina wondered if exhaustion had made her hallucinate the scene in the kitchen the night before. She hadn’t exactly been in top form this week. 

She stood at the counter next to the coffee pot and nibbled at a piece of toast for breakfast, then poured a fresh cup of coffee. She curled her fingers around its warmth. The room felt colder than it had a moment ago.

Maybe she should call Magnus about the heat. It seemed a little faulty, with rooms suddenly going cold every now and then. Her bedroom was the only place in the house that seemed to be consistently warm. 

“You’ll die of scurvy if all you eat is toast and coffee,” a glum voice said from behind her. 

Catarina turned around and let out a small shriek, her coffee mug slipping from her hands and shattering as it hit the ground, the hot coffee barely missing her bare feet. 

There was a man sitting at her kitchen table. He was pale all over, other than his dark eyes. His hair looked completely white, and even his sweater was a faded shade of green.

And she could see the back of the kitchen chair straight through him, she realized with another jolt. 

“I’m glad to be rid of that one,” the transparent man said, looking down at the remains of Oscar the Grouch scattered across the white tile. “Magnus has terrible taste in birthday presents.”

“You’re a ghost,” Catarina said, still rooted to the spot in shock. 

“Oh good, you can state the obvious,” he said dryly. His voice had the trace of an accent, something she couldn’t quite place. Almost British, but something about it sounded different from the standard TV accent. 

“Are you the guy who disappeared?” She tried to recall the name the nurses at the hospital had mentioned. “Ragnor Fell?”

“Obviously,” the man—Ragnor—rolled his eyes. 

Catarina lost what little patience she had left for a snarky ghost who had been harassing her all week. “What, did you decide to stop with the spooky stuff and just be sarcastic at me instead?”

The ghost huffed. “I felt bad,” he admitted, and had the grace to look ashamed of himself. “After last night. So I’m offering you a deal.”

The temperature of the room dropped a few more degrees as the ghost carefully lifted the lid of a box she hadn’t noticed on the table in front of him. Inside was a silvery pearl necklace with a delicately crafted pendant holding a sapphire larger than the first joint of her thumb, haloed with diamonds like petals on a flower.

“This was my great grandmother’s,” he said. “It should fetch a decent price at a reputable antique shop. I want you to sell it and use the money to move somewhere else. And don’t tell Magnus.”

Catarina knew a little about antiques. She had an ex-girlfriend, who she was still friends with, whose family ran an antique store. Diana tended to prefer antique swords and other weaponry over jewelry, but her family would still give Catarina a good price for the necklace if she brought it to them. 

“Why don’t you want me to tell Magnus?” Catarina asked suspiciously. It wasn’t normal to secretively offer a stranger valuable antiques to make them to go away. Not that anything about this conversation was _normal_. 

“Magnus thinks _this_,” he gestured to his transparent form, “is his fault.”

Catarina’s eyes widened. “Wait, are you saying Magnus really _did_ kill you?” 

Ragnor scoffed. “Of course not. I’m not _dead_.”

“You look awfully ghostly for someone who isn’t dead,” Catarina felt obligated to point out. 

“It’s a curse, we think. Magnus’s crazy ex tricked him into taking a weird locket when they broke up. I’m the one who opened it, and when I did, I turned into this,” he gestured again at his transparency. “There was no body, which is why we don’t think I’m technically dead. But I seem to be trapped between worlds, and the curse ties me to the house. I can’t even go past the porch. Magnus keeps trying to find a way to break it, but he hasn’t had any luck.”

Catarina stepped carefully around the puddle of now-cold coffee and pieces of broken mug on the floor to sit down in the chair opposite of the shade of the “not dead” ghost. 

“Why did Magnus rent the house to me if he knew you were here?”

“I need to be around someone living to keep my connection to the living world,” Ragnor frowned. “If the house stays empty for too long, I begin to fade.”

“Why try to scare me off if you need someone in the house?” Catarina asked. Ragnor looked like a grump, but he didn’t really seem like the type for poltergeist shenanigans. 

Ragnor sighed. “Magnus needs to let me go. He’s put his life on hold and been at this for long enough with no leads. It’s time to move on. I can’t watch him torture himself over me anymore.”

“So you want me to take your grandmother’s jewelry and leave you alone to vanish, all without telling Magnus?”

“Yes.” Ragnor pushed the necklace across the table towards her. “I saw the bills you left in here yesterday. This should fetch enough to cover the worst of it. You can go on with your life too.”

Catarina stared at the necklace for a long moment, watching the deep blue stone catch the light. It would be so easy to take it and get herself out of this financial mess. She could go back to New York. She wouldn’t have to work herself into the ground to keep herself afloat. 

Instead she slid her hand into her pocket. Ragnor narrowed his eyes when he noticed the phone she pulled out. “What are you doing?”

“Calling Magnus.”

By the time Ragnor had caught on to what she was doing, Catarina had already bolted out the front door and was on her way down the porch steps. 

“Catarina!” Magnus answered, his voice bright, but with a touch of concern. “What a delightful surprise. Is everything all right at the house?”

“I met your friend Ragnor,” Catarina said without preamble. “He told me everything.”

“Oh no,” Magnus’s voice sank. “He promised to stay in the attic and leave you alone.”

Ragnor glared at her from the edge of the porch, but it seemed true that he couldn’t go any farther than that. He was barely visible in the sunlight. 

“He tried to bribe me into leaving without telling you.”

”He wha-“ Magnus started, and then sighed. “I understand if you want to leave now. I’m sorry for not informing you of Ragnor’s presence. I was mistaken thinking he could actually behave himself this time.”

“I’ll stay,” Catarina said, watching Ragnor on the porch. His dark eyes widened with surprise. “Until you find a way to cure him. I’ll stay here and keep him from fading.”

“Free of charge now since there’s no longer any pretense to keep up,” Magnus said, the relief clear in his voice. He sounded exhausted now that he had let his bright mask slip. “Ragnor really isn’t a bad guy once you get to know him. The human personification of a rain cloud sometimes, but he’s a kind man underneath.”

Catarina thought of how Ragnor’s face had looked when he admitted he was trying to get rid of her to spare Magnus what he felt like was a hopeless waste of his friend’s life. And how he hadn’t had the heart to keep up his poltergeist act once he had found out why Catarina couldn’t afford to leave. 

She believed Magnus. Surely this Ragnor Fell was someone worth helping.

“I’m in Paris now,” Magnus continued. “It’s where Camille is from. I’m hoping to track down someone who might know where she is now.”

“Good luck,” Catarina told him. “Call me if there’s any news.”

She hung up the phone and walked back up the porch stairs. “You’re still stuck with me,” she said, sitting down on the porch swing, a little wary, but not scared. 

Ragnor huffed another irritated sigh and sat down next to her, or looked like he was sitting there at least. The swing didn’t move at all with his weight. 

“How does this ghost thing work?” Catarina asked, absently pushing the ground with her toes to rock the swing. It swung like she was sitting alone on it too, though she could see Ragnor next to her. 

Ragnor shrugged. “I don’t know much. I’m stuck the same way I was when I vanished. I don’t eat or sleep. I can’t leave the house. I can only touch things if I concentrate, and even then I can’t really feel them.”

The temperature dropped, and the swing rocked a little harder, pushed by Ragnor kicking off of the ground. 

“I don’t have any energy of my own, so I have to pull it from around me. That’s why it’s always cold if I’m around. The more I do, the more energy I have to take.”

“How long did that tower take you last night?” Catarina asked. 

“About four hours since I did it while the sun was up. Six to put it all back after you yelled at me.”

Catarina snorted. “Serves you right.”

Ragnor huffed a laugh rather than a sigh this time and rocked the swing with his foot again.

Maybe this would work out, Catarina thought. Having a ghost roommate couldn’t be that bad. And maybe Magnus would have better luck finding a cure now that he didn’t have to worry about someone taking care of the house. 

——

Ragnor meant to avoid Catarina after he had failed to get her to go away. He meant to spend his time alone in the attic with his books. It was what he had promised Magnus he would do after Magnus had announced his mad plan to rent out the house so Ragnor would have someone to leech energy off of.

But Ragnor found he couldn’t stay away from her, especially with how the new chill of fall made it harder for him to manifest when the house was empty. Even harder than it had been last year. 

On good days, he could stay in the attic, drawing the energy to keep himself there from the sun coming in through the skylights, but on bad days he found himself trapped in the gray in-between, where he could see the shadows of what he assumed was the Other Side. 

He and Magnus had found out the hard way what the consequences of leaving the house empty for too long were. Magnus had flown to LA for two weeks to consult a crazy man from the internet Ragnor was sure was secretly a serial killer, and by the time he got back, Ragnor could barely find his way back out of the dark. 

If it hadn’t been summer, Ragnor wasn’t sure he would have been able to make it back at all. The shorter and colder the days got, the harder it was to pull enough energy to stay tethered to the world. 

So when Catarina was home, a warm bright spot showing him the way out of the gray nothing, Ragnor found himself drawn to her like a moth to a flame. 

She worked long hours at the hospital, but he sat with her while she ate breakfast most mornings and needled her into eating more than just toast. He’d listen to her complain about what a pain small town life was while she ate the omelette or oatmeal he had forced her to make.  She hated having to drive everywhere, neither of the two grocery stores stocked some of the spices she liked, which made it hard to recreate her mother’s cooking, and everyone knew everyone else’s business.

”It feels ironic to move away from one of the biggest cities in the world and feel like you have _less_ privacy,” she muttered into her coffee that first morning.

”They’ll leave you alone if you stay in the house and growl at anyone who tries to talk to you,” he advised.

Catarina shook her head and laughed as she stood up to put her empty dishes in the sink.

”Leave them,” he said. “I don’t short circuit the sink like I do the stove.”

She gave him a curious look before she thanked him and left to get ready for her shift.

He should have known he was in trouble as soon as she had offered to stay in the house to help him, he thought as he washed the plate, concentrating to keep the slippery surface in his insubstantial hands. Catarina had the same kind of eyes as Magnus, the kind of warm eyes that never gave up on people who needed help.

He made it a week before he offered to unlock the attic for her on one of her rare days off, officially letting her have full run of the house. 

“I feel like I’m in the library scene of _Beauty and the Beast_,” Catarina said as she looked around at the overflowing bookshelves that had been crammed into the oddly shaped space of the attic. The room was bright, the skylights built into the ceiling making the attic one of the sunniest rooms in the house. 

She ran her fingers over one of the rows of books, and pulled one off the shelf. “My favorite Christmas story,” she laughed, turning to show him the cover of _The Hogfather_, with skeletal Death dressed like the parody of Father Christmas, in a sleigh pulled by a team of hogs instead of reindeer. 

When Catarina smiled like that, it struck him how beautiful she was, standing in a pool of sunlight that made a halo of her dark hair and gave her brown skin a soft glow. 

He was in even more trouble than he had thought, he realized.

——

Ragnor found Catarina digging through a pile of yarn on the bed in what used to be his bedroom—hers now— and stopped in the doorway. Even when he had been trying to scare her out of the house, he hadn’t actually gone in her private space. That was a line he hadn’t been able to make himself cross. 

“I used to knit,” Catarina explained when she noticed him lurking, waving him into the room with the dark gray ball of wool in her hand. “My mom taught me how. It’s been a while, but I figured I could use a new sweater.”

Her eyes always got sad when she mentioned her mother. Ragnor didn’t know the whole story, but he gathered that Catarina had lost her recently. He wanted to reach out and lay a hand on Catarina’s shoulder to comfort her, or take her hand and let her know he understood how it felt to lose a parent, but he pushed down the urge.

He would just make her colder, he thought, glaring at the yarn in her hand like it was accusing him of being at fault for her needing a warmer jumper in the first place. He should stay in the attic where his presence would bother her less, especially as the weather got colder. 

He knew he should. 

Instead he nudged a ball of sunny yellow yarn out of the pile, remembering how she had looked smiling in the sunlight when he had shown her the attic. “This one suits you better,” he mumbled before vanishing from her room.

Catarina found him again that afternoon. He still couldn’t stay away from her for long.

The day was warm, autumn having not quite taken hold yet, so Catarina talked him into sitting out on the porch with her while she did what to him looked like sorcery, wrapping the yarn around her fingers and the knitting needles in a complicated pattern until fabric started to slowly appear between her hands. 

“Do you have any hobbies other than building towers out of fine china?” Catarina asked, a teasing note in her voice. Ragnor startled, having been thoroughly distracted by the tangle of yellow wound around her dark fingers. 

“Reading,” he said. “And hiking, not that I can do that anymore.”

“I used to go camping when I was a kid,” Catarina said, smiling softly at the memory. “I miss it sometimes.”

He opened his mouth, about to offer to take her to one of his favorite camping spots for a weekend trip before he remembered he couldn’t. He closed his mouth with an irritated huff that made Catarina raise her eyebrows at him.

The days wore on, and the weather got steadily colder. Ragnor found himself trying harder to avoid the call of the gray in-between space where it was so easy to get lost, where he had meant to go in order to spare Magnus the burden of trying to save him.

He didn’t want to be lost anymore.

He wanted to cook a proper breakfast for Catarina while she drank her coffee and found things to gently tease him about. He wanted to show her the paths through the woods behind the house, where they could walk together in the quiet and look at the bright colors of the changing leaves.

Magnus called as often as he could to give them updates on anything he had learned. It was never much. 

“Tessa had a book on cursed objects in her library,” he said on one call from London that Catarina had put on speaker for him, “But none that had any instruction on how to reverse them.”

A month ago, Ragnor would have been relieved, hoping this meant Magnus would finally be ready to give up and move on. Now he was disappointed by the lack of news. 

He wanted to reach for Catarina’s hand across the table. He wanted to stop making her cold. 

——

“Hey, Cat!” someone called after her as she left the nurses’ station at the end of her shift the day before Halloween. 

Catarina winced before turning around. She disliked it when people shortened her name, especially people she barely knew. It was Greg, one of the other nurses who worked in the ER, who she had already turned down twice for dates she wasn’t interested in.

“You planning a Halloween party at your place?” He grinned, standing too close to her for her comfort. “Should be easy since the place is already haunted.”

“No, just a quite night in and handing out candy to trick-or-treaters,” Catarina said, taking a step back to get him out of her personal space bubble. 

Greg laughed at that, leaning closer, apparently oblivious to Catarina’s body language. “You’ll be waiting all night then. Kids won’t come near that house. They’re terrified of the place. Sure you don’t want me to come keep you company in case Old Man Fell’s ghost shows up?” He waggled his eyebrows.

Catarina snorted. Ragnor was only a few years older than she and Greg were at the most, though he certainly carried himself like a grouchy old man.  She turned Greg down for the third time, leaving him standing at the nurses’ station, annoyed over being rejected again, as she escaped on the elevator. 

She frowned at her reflection in the mirrored doors once she was alone, thinking about what Greg had said about the kids being too scared to come near the house. She worked with scared kids, and was used to being able to put them at ease. The idea of not being able to do that bothered her. 

She came home that night with a trunk full of Halloween decorations, including two fresh pumpkins to carve into jack-o-lanterns. 

“What’s all this?” Ragnor asked as she dumped the first load in the entranceway. 

“We’re decorating for Halloween,” Catarina announced. “Apparently all the kids think the house is haunted, so we’re going to make it more welcoming.”

“The house _is_ haunted,” Ragnor pointed out. 

“You don’t count,” Catarina said absently, already pulling stuff out of the shopping bags. “There’s nothing _scary_ about the house.”

It had been years since Catarina had put any effort into decorating for a holiday. She found herself enjoying it as she hung cartoonish witches and bats around the porch while Ragnor watched, bemused. 

“You can do the spiderwebs,” Catarina nodded to the package as she moved on to strings of orange and purple lights. “They should be light enough for you to move, and they don’t have any batteries for you to accidentally drain.”

“I’ve never decorated for Halloween,” Ragnor said as he stretched the flimsy webbing across the porch rails. “It seems so _American_.”

“It isn’t, you’re just boring.”

“This is usually Magnus’s kind of thing.”

“Magnus isn’t here, so you’re the one who’s going to be helping me carve pumpkins.”

Ragnor wrinkled his nose. “I’ve never carved pumpkins before either.”

“There’s a first time for everything,” Catarina laughed. She reached up, about to ruffle his hair, and only at the last moment remembered that she couldn’t. It had felt so _normal_, standing in the twilight, teasing him as they taped up silly decorations together. 

She dropped her hand awkwardly and stepped back to admire their handiwork on the porch for a moment before gesturing for Ragnor to follow her inside. 

“First we need to clean out the pumpkins,” Catarina explained as she set up a nest of newspapers on the floor to work on and dug a knife and an ice cream scoop out of the kitchen drawers. 

She cut the stems off and pushed one in front of Ragnor with the ice cream scoop. 

Ragnor gave her an unimpressed look, but he picked up the ice cream scoop and got to work gutting the pumpkin. He had to do it slowly and carefully. It took so much effort just for him to stay solid enough to hold on to the pumpkin, Catarina could almost see her breath in the room.

She wanted to laugh, despite the cold. She wished she could take a picture to send to Magnus, of Ragnor sitting cross legged on the floor up to his elbow in pumpkin guts, a furrow between his eyebrows as he concentrated. 

She passed him a marker, shivering as his fingers brushed hers like a cool breeze. “If you draw the faces, I’ll carve them,” she said, trying to ignore how hot her face suddenly felt. She looked down and busied herself with gutting the other pumpkin.

“This one is Magnus,” Ragnor said, turning the first pumpkin around so she could see the a cartoonish cat face he had drawn. “I want you to take a picture of it and send it to him.” 

She assumed it was some inside joke between the two of them, but she pulled her phone out to take a picture of Ragnor with the pumpkin, knowing Ragnor himself wouldn’t actually show up in the photo. But she was happy to see him starting to enjoy himself. 

Catarina’s hands ached by the time they were finished carving the pumpkins, but she smiled at Ragnor as she set the new jack-o-lanterns up on the porch and admired the full effect. 

It wasn’t an elaborate display, but it looked nice for a last minute decorating attempt. The house looked festively spooky, but not scary, even with Ragnor standing transparent on the porch, the lights from the living room visible through his torso. 

The decorations seemed to work the next night. Or Greg had been exaggerating about the house’s reputation to try to get an invite, which is what she was starting to suspect was the case. 

She and Ragnor sat together on the porch swing, Catarina wearing a witch hat and holding a cauldron full of candy in her lap, and Ragnor fading from view every time they heard the sounds of a group approaching. 

They weren’t exactly overrun with trick-or-treaters, but Ragnor said it was more than he usually saw before his disappearance. He may not have decorated or carved pumpkins, but he did grudgingly admit that he still always had a bowl of Halloween candy to pass out to any child who happened to show up. 

——

The weather turned from chill to cold, and Catarina woke up one November morning shivering under her blankets, with an ache up her spine that seemed to radiate into heaviness through her limbs. 

She groaned as she slid out of bed and her feet hit the cold floor of her room, but tried to convince herself it was just the effects of the weather changing. She couldn’t afford to get sick. By the time she got downstairs, the chill had worn off and the room felt too warm instead. 

“No,” Ragnor said as soon as he caught sight of her, moving to block her way to her morning coffee. “Go back to bed. You look like death warmed over.”

“You’re one to talk,” Catarina muttered, trying to dodge around him to get the coffee.

Ragnor’s hand pressed against her forehead, his cool fingers soothing against her hot skin. She stopped, surprised at the touch. Ragnor usually avoided touching her, even though he never felt as cold as he seemed to think he did, and his insubstantial touch wasn’t unpleasant. “I can’t even feel properly, and I can tell you’re burning up,” he said. “Call in and go back to bed.”

“The hospital is already short staffed,” Catarina protested, and then sneezed.

“Probably because of idiots like you who try to go to work sick,” Ragnor snapped. 

The sneeze triggered the pounding headache that had apparently been lurking, ready to spring out at the first opportunity, and she gave up. She let Ragnor herd her back into the bedroom while she dialed her supervisor, stopping only to grab some ibuprofen out of the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. He stood in the doorway with his arms crossed until she was actually in the bed with the covers pulled up to her neck. 

He disappeared for a few minutes, then showed back up with a cup of tea carefully held in his transparent hands. She wondered how hard he’d had to fight with the kettle to get it to turn on for him in order to make it.

A burst of warmth that wasn’t from the fever flooded her as she took a sip of the tea. It was her job to take care of other people, which spilled over into her personal life as well. She couldn’t think of a time someone had tried to take care of her since she had been a child and her mother would make her soup and watch cartoons with her until she felt better, which had changed when Catarina had become the one responsible for taking care of her mother.

She didn’t have the heart to tell Ragnor that the tea had gone cold. 

——

Magnus showed up at the beginning of December, right after the first snow fall of the year, looking dejected. 

He had finally found someone connected to Camille, but all he had been able to get out of the man—one of Camille’s hangers on called Archer— was that the locket had been meant for Magnus, and that only Camille herself was capable of breaking the curse. 

“I’ve been discussing things with the new detective in charge of Ragnor’s case,” Magnus said, leaning forward on the sofa, his elbows on his knees, chin resting on his laced fingers. “Detective Aldertree was less than helpful, but it appears he’s decided to retire. Detective Lightwood called me to inform me that he would be taking it over, and that he would like to interview me again. He’s been much easier to talk to.”

“Aldertree was convinced you had murdered me and walled my body up behind the fireplace,” Ragnor snorted. “That jackass wouldn’t look at any evidence that didn’t support the story he had already invented. Anything else _has_ to be an improvement.”

Ragnor and Magnus had both known it would have been useless to try to tell the police the truth when Ragnor had first disappeared. All Aldertree wanted was a newsworthy case. If Ragnor had manifested in front of him, the jackass would have them up to their eyeballs in news programs and paranormal investigators. 

“Alexander certainly is an improvement,” Magnus said. Then to Ragnor’s amusement, blushed. 

“Oh, _Alexander_, is it?” Ragnor teased. Magnus ignored him, but his ears were still red. It was good seeing his friend finally getting over Camille at least.

“How much do you think you can trust him with?” Ragnor asked, more seriously, letting the chance to tease Magnus more go.

“I want to say all of it,” Magnus said, biting his lip. “But my judgement was so bad with Camille. I’m not sure I can trust it now. What if telling him just makes things worse?”

Ragnor was a both a scholar and a voracious reader, but he still didn’t have an abundant enough vocabulary to adequately describe his complete and utter loathing for Camille Belcourt. It was bad enough that she was a cheating weasel who broke Magnus’s heart and accidentally cursed Ragnor. It was even worse how the fallout had left Magnus questioning himself and afraid to trust someone new.

“You don’t actually need the case solved though, right?” Catarina said. At least she was proof Magnus hadn’t entirely lost his ability to trust, and on Catarina it had been a good call, Ragnor thought. “It doesn’t matter if they have anything to charge her with or not if all you need is to find out where she is.”

“I’ve tried everything else I can think of to find her, but she seems to be deliberately avoiding me,” Magnus sighed. “I’ve been wondering myself if Alexander’s department could manage it if I told him about her.”

Catarina laid a comforting hand on his shoulder, and Ragnor felt a hot flare of jealousy for a moment, though he couldn’t tell if it was because he wanted to be the one to be touched by Catarina, or if he wanted to be the one to comfort Magnus. He immediately felt ashamed of himself for begrudging them for it. It wasn’t like he had any comfort to offer either of them.

Magnus and Ragnor spent the next week discussing it, arguing in circles about the best way to point Magnus’s new detective in Camille’s direction without either making Magnus look guiltier, or risking Ragnor being found out. Camille had no actual ties to Ragnor, and his involvement in her scheme had been an accident. There was no evidence to link her to Ragnor’s disappearance, and it appeared Camille intended to keep it that way by doing her best to hide from Magnus.

Magnus fell into a deeper funk as the days dragged by with no clear new path that wouldn’t put him or Ragnor in danger. His instincts were clearly telling him to trust Detective Lightwood, but he still wouldn’t let himself believe them. The whole mess kept him from being able to make a decision, and it made Ragnor want to shake him.

Magnus needed to get out of the house. God knew, Ragnor wished he could do the same, but they were both going to snap cooped up together like this, and only one of them was physically capable of leaving. Magnus needed a distraction. 

Ragnor looked out the window at the distant lights of the house next door, already decorated for Christmas, and got an idea. 

“You should take Catarina out to pick a Christmas tree,” Ragnor said. “She probably hasn’t ever had a real one before.”

Magnus brightened. “The house could use some Christmas cheer. You keep it so dreary in here.”

“You shouldn’t have missed Halloween then,” Ragnor replied, remembering Catarina’s quiet joy when the first trick-or-treaters had shown up. “We made it quite festive.”

“I still can’t believe you actually decorated without me here to force you,” Magnus laughed. “She’s a good influence on you.”

He flounced off to find Catarina and make their plans. Fifteen minutes later, Catarina was pulling a coat over the sunny yellow sweater she had knitted as she came down the stairs, looking over her shoulder and still laughing at whatever Magnus had said to her. Magnus followed a minute later and tossed her one of his own warm hats on their way to the front door.

Ragnor watched from the window as they left, deep in an argument about which car to take, and whether Catarina’s car technically qualified as a _car_ and not a screaming metal death trap.

Ragnor sighed heavily as the warmth of their presence faded away and the gray came up to swallow him. He couldn’t let them know he was running out of time. 

He didn’t want to go, but they would be fine without him. Magnus was moving on from Camille. Ragnor could leave him instructions on what to sell to cover Catarina’s debts so she could go back to New York, or at least move into a house with no ghosts.

They would be fine.

——

Snow crunched under Catarina’s shoes as she and Magnus wandered the Christmas tree farm, Catarina carrying a measuring stick several feet taller than she was, and Magnus carrying the saw they had been given.

“So we just pick a random tree to cut down?” Catarina asked. Everything in the unnaturally neat pine forest looked largely the same to her.

Magnus gave her a shocked look. “Of course not! We need a tree that’s just under eight feet for a perfect fit once the star is on top, and it needs to be nice and full. We’ll know the right tree when we find it.”

“How do you know exactly what size tree we need for Ragnor’s house?”

”I used to spend the holidays with him after my mother died and my stepdad disowned me,” Magnus said in that light way he had of speaking about things he was pretending didn’t hurt him. “Neither of us are particularly religious, but celebrating the holidays was always more about having something to brighten up the darkest part of the year than anything else. Ragnor was always absurdly picky about the tree and the lights, and it appears I’ve internalized his nitpicking.”

”So not that one?” She pointed to a tree barely taller than she was.

”Absolutely not.”

”What about that one?”

Magnus huffed. ”The needles are _much_ too thin on the left side.”

”That one over there?”

”Are you blind? It’s tilted so far to the right, it’s nearly horizontal. Ragnor would never let it in the house.”

Catarina laughed and looped her free arm through Magnus’s.

“Tell me more about _Alexander,_” she said, nudging his side. She had grown up an only child, but she wondered if this was what having a brother was like.

Magnus flushed, and Catarina grinned. “He’s very earnest. He’s the kind of man who always wants to do the right thing, which is why he was combing through Aldertree’s old cases, trying to fix all the errors Aldertree left. I think he believes I didn’t have anything to do with Ragnor’s disappearance. I just don’t know how to tell him that my evil ex was the one responsible.”

“Are you worried he’ll see you as a suspect, or do you just not want to talk to him about your ex-girlfriend.”

“Maybe a little of both,” Magnus admitted. “We had coffee together last week while he was off the clock. It was nice. I don’t want to do something that would mess that up.”

“I’m a pretty good judge of character,” Catarina nudged Magnus’s shoulder with hers again. “I knew there was no way you could be involved in hurting anyone the second I met you. Why don’t I third wheel your next coffee date and see what kind of feeling I get from him. Things would be easier if you could trust him enough to introduce him to Ragnor.”

“Speaking of Ragnor, does he seem all right to you?” Magnus asked, his smile fading as they walked. 

Catarina frowned. “I do feel like I’ve been seeing him less since the snow hit. But he told me once that winter made things harder for him, so I assumed that was the reason.”

“That’s probably all it is,” Magnus said, forcing the smile back, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes this time. “Having some Christmas lights to brighten up the dark will do him good too.”

Catarina caught sight of a tree that stood out from the endless parade of trees that Magnus had already rejected.

“What about this one?” she asked, holding her measuring stick up to the tree she had stopped at. It looked about the right height to her. 

Magnus walked around the tree, carefully inspecting it whatever mysterious qualities had disqualified all the others they had walked past. 

“It looks prefect,” he grinned, brighter and more real this time. He held up the saw and struck a dramatic pose. “Now stand back while I heroically hack it down.”

Once the tree had fallen, Catarina helped Magnus drag it back to the front of the farm. They traded the tree for cups of hot cocoa as the employees put the tree through a series of machines to shake out the loose needles and cut the end so it would fit in the tree stand Magnus said was in the box of Christmas decorations tucked away in one of the spare bedrooms. 

They expected Ragnor to be waiting when they got home, but the downstairs was empty.

“Maybe he’s just lurking in the attic,” Magnus frowned. “I’ll look for him while I go get the decorations down.”

Catarina felt a tinge of worry. Ragnor could be prone to moody spells where he stayed out of sight, but he was the one who suggested getting a tree to decorate. 

Magnus came back down the stairs a few minutes later, a box spilling tinsel and sparkling ribbons in his arms. She could tell by his expression that he hadn’t found Ragnor. He wordlessly went to the thermostat and turned it up a few degrees. “Maybe it’s too cold,” he muttered to himself.

“Why do you two look like you ran over the neighbor’s cat on the way home?”

Catarina let out the breath she had been holding. Relief flooded through her as spun toward the voice. Was she imagining it, or was he more transparent than usual?

Magnus’s eyes still looked tight, but he grinned at his friend. “You were about to miss all the fun. Catarina found a perfect tree, and I found the rolls of glitter ribbon you hid the last time I visited you for Christmas.”

“I should have thrown those away. Now they’re going to shed all over the living room and you’re going to track it all over the house. I’ll never get it clean again.”

“That’s half the fun,” Magnus’s smile stretched wider, and Catarina was reminded of the Cheshire Cat.

Ragnor huffed a sigh and rolled his eyes, but Catarina was relieved to see he looked a little more grounded than he had a moment ago. She and Magnus shouldn’t have both left for so long. Having them both gone with the cold of the snow had clearly taken a bigger toll on Ragnor than they had expected. They would have to be more careful until the weather warmed up again.

Ragnor caught her worried eye, and his expression softened. “Go drag the tree in. I promised I would help decorate the bloody thing.”

Hauling the tree from the driveway and up the porch steps was more work than she had anticipated. Without the flat, snow slicked ground of the tree farm to slide it on, she and Magnus were both out of breath and sweating under their coats by the time they had it inside the house and in its stand, and it had been called all manner of un-Christmasy names between them, while Ragnor stood on the porch and laughed at their struggles.

“I need a drink before I can muster up any more Christmas cheer,” Magnus panted, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. He disappeared into the kitchen and came back with two glasses of the eggnog they had stopped to buy on the way home. 

He passed a glass to Catarina, who nearly choked on the first sip. “How much rum did you put in this?” she laughed. 

“The requisite amount for Christmas cheer,” he winked at her.

Catarina took another, more careful, sip before setting her glass down to start opening boxes of ornaments. 

“Lights first,” Ragnor said, depositing the carefully wound string into Magnus’s lap. 

“The lights are the worst part about decorating the tree,” Magnus muttered under his breath, but he started to unwind the string of lights around the tree while Ragnor directed him. “Now I remember why I always made you do them.”

Catarina busied herself by inspecting the ornaments. You could tell a lot about a family by what kind of ornaments they put on their tree. When her mother had been alive, most of their ornaments had been ones Catarina had made at school, carefully placed on the small artificial tree that would fit in their little apartment. 

Ragnor’s ornaments were a bizarre mix of elegant antiques and kitschy knick-knacks. If she were making a guess, she would say the antiques had been passed down through Ragnor’s family and the eccentric ones were all from Magnus. 

Catarina pulled out a ceramic Santa Clause riding an alligator and raised a silent eyebrow at the boys.

“I found that when I went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras one year,” Magnus explained when he stepped back out from behind the tree and saw what she was holding, several stray pine needles caught on his sleeves and in his hair. 

“And it couldn’t have gone on his own Christmas tree, apparently,” Ragnor sighed, clearly having had this argument before. 

“Your tree would be too boring without my help, my dear cabbage,” Magnus said, picking his drink back up and taking a swig.

Catarina laughed and placed the silly ornament on the tree, right in the center where it couldn’t be missed.

Ragnor glared at her and carefully picked up a delicate egg shaped ornament displaying a tiny gold nativity scene inside. 

Catarina hunted for another of Magnus’s ornaments and found a Grinch. She grinned and put it on the tree, while Ragnor countered with a crystal snowflake. 

This continued for several rounds until the front of the tree was an even mix of elegant and absurd. Catarina ducked to grab another ornament while Ragnor reached over her head to put his on the tree.

“Stop,” Magnus called with an amused laugh. “That one’s mistletoe, and you’re both standing under it. Christmas tradition dictates that you have to kiss. Being a ghost doesn’t get you out of it.”

Ragnor scoffed, but Catarina tilted her face up to his. Her cheeks felt hot from the rum in the eggnog, and maybe something else she didn’t know if she should name. “Rules are rules,” she said, a little breathless.

Ragnor’s expression softened, and he looked strangely shy for a moment. She felt the cool pressure of his hand against her cheek a moment before his lips brushed hers like a winter wind. 

She closed her eyes, and could almost imagine what it would feel like to kiss him for real. For the hand on her cheek to be warm, for the lips against hers to be soft, but solid. 

She gasped as he pulled back and her eyes flew open. The hand still on her cheek _was_ warm. And the face in front of her’s was solid, no sign of transparency, his dark eyes wide in shock as they searched hers. 

Catarina’s hand trembled as she raised it to touch Ragnor’s chest, right over his heart. She felt the soft wool of the sweater he always wore, warmed by his body heat, and the racing beat of his heart underneath. His free hand rose to cover hers on his chest, and she could feel the slight tremor in his fingers as they tightened around hers. 

Magnus choked on his eggnog, breaking the spell. They both turned to look at him. “A _kiss_?” he thundered, like he wasn’t quite sure whether to be thrilled or furious. “I’ve been traveling all over the world looking for clues, and the whole time the cure has been a _kiss_?! _That_ was Camille’s plan? To turn me into a ghost and force me to take her back because the cure was for her to _kiss_ me, like we’re in some kind of demented fairy tale?”

Magnus made an exasperated noise and then gave up his rant, throwing his arms around Ragnor instead. Ragnor returned the embrace one-armed, keeping hold of Catarina’s hand with the other, like he was afraid to let her go. 

“It looks like this is permanent,” Magnus said after he pulled back, tugging at a still ghostly white lock of Ragnor’s hair. “I can help you dye it back to your normal color.”

“I kind of like it,” Catarina said, finally getting to brush her hand through Ragnor’s curls like she had been wanting to for months. She could see lights from the Christmas tree reflected in his eyes as he looked down at her, their soft glow bringing out lighter flecks of brown that she hadn’t been able to see while he had been transparent. Magnus had already sat down with a notebook, muttering to himself about plausible explanations for Ragnor’s reappearance and how maybe this meant he could invite Alec out for a proper date.

“Will you stay?” Ragnor murmured. “You don’t have to of course,” he added hastily, his pale cheeks reddening. “Once my accounts are back under my control I’ll help you move anywhere you want, but I would like it if you would—“

Catarina cut him off, standing on her toes to press her lips against his again. She thought about New York and everything she had missed months ago, then about the odd new family she had found here with Ragnor and Magnus.

“I’ll stay,” she breathed out against his lips. He pulled her tighter against him, his hands sliding up her back, and she caught the small noise he made in another kiss.

There wasn’t anywhere else she would rather be. 


End file.
